The Cambridge grammar of the English language

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1. bradrnSep 2026
   Oh, certainly, as is the case for any language!

   In the case you mention, I note that Huddleston & Pullum in their Cambridge Grammar of the English Language specifically call ‘some’ an existential determiner. As is usual with them, this is an insightful observation: you use ‘some <noun>’ specifically in order to say that there exists some set of things drawn from some larger set or in some configuration. You say ‘there are some vendors in the street’ because you’re drawing attention to their existence in the street (and indeed ‘there is/are’ is the prototypical English expression for existentials). You don’t say ‘they are some vendors’, because the use of ‘they’ implies some specific group of vendors already known to both speaker and listener — highlighting their existence again feels weird.

   (Of course, this analysis is still incomplete. At some point you simply have to list all the specific ways in which ‘some’ is used — which, indeed, is exactly what Huddleston & Pullum do. Furthermore I’m certain that there is some discourse context in which ‘they are some vendors’ would be natural, even though I haven’t managed to think of one just yet.)

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2. hilbert42May 2023
   It seems to me you ought to be railing against English grammar in general rather than criticizing me. I do not make the rules, I just use them the best way I can (and that doesn't mean I always use them correctly).

   I don't claim to be an authority on English grammar, nor am I as pedantic about its use as you imagine. My background is technical, and my English grades at school were nothing special (I was never asked to write for the school's magazine). Whilst it may seem to you that I am being overly donnish about usage, I have learned the hard way that using sloppy English gets noticed and doesn't win one any favors, in fact, I've found that not being careful about one's usage can be outright disadvantageous. People who do have a good command of English grammar may not mention bad instances out of politeness, but they never let them go unnoticed. Grammar is so ingrained in their psyche that bad usage automatically waves red flags.

   That said, I've been lucky enough to have encountered people who have had no compunction about drawing my attention to my grammatical errors. Many instances come to mind and several were embarrassing. Decades ago when working in Europe, I had colleagues—native German speakers—proofread my technical documents. The trouble was that besides a few errors in the subject they also drew my attention to my grammatical errors and inappropriate use of colloquialisms. It's a sobering moment when one meets non-native English speakers who speak English better than one does. That perhaps is an unusual case, but I've had similar experiences in my English-speaking environment.

   If you think such matters unimportant then so be it. I would contend however that if one wants to be taken seriously then paying attention to one's grammar is important. Incidentally, I'd suggest that one never sees instances of the grammatical errors we've been talking about actually appear in books and publications from big well-known publishers, as book editors simply never let them go through to printing.

   Your reference to the apostrophe to indicate a plural is nevertheless deemed grammatically incorrect by most references. That it's earned probably the most derogatory nickname of all instances of bad usage—the greengrocer's apostrophe, or apostrofly —seems to attest to how widely it is detested. Whilst some cases are tolerated to avoid confusion, there are usually ways to avoid using them. For example, Mind your p's and q's is easily resolved with Mind your Ps and Qs, the same for DVDs. It's not the unusual cases that are the issue, it's that by far most instances of bad usage are committed by people who simply don't know how to use the apostrophe because they were never taught its correct usage at school.

   It's misfortune that English is lumbered with the apostrophe but its use is simple to understand and its rules can be taught in just one lesson, unfortunately, it's often taught in such a bungled and convoluted way that it's little wonder students are often left in confusion. Such bad teaching ought to be held up as an exemplar of how not to teach English. I vividly recall learning the possessive apostrophe in primary school in just one lesson, and I've never forgotten it. The teacher said 'Just ask yourself a question who owns the object and the answer will automatically tell you where to place the apostrophe—that is, it's located immediately at the end of one's answer'. That's it, end of story: 'who owns the bat?', answer 'one boy' thus the boy's bat; if two boys have ownership then it's the boys' bat. It's remarkable that so many manage to screw this rule up.

   Some grammarians suggest eliminating the apostrophe altogether. That's one solution, the logic being that one understands what's meant from its context and that's often true but not always so, same applies for the fewer/less case, but again ambiguity can often creep in.

   Given English is, in parts, already disastrously messy and ambiguous, I'd postulate it makes little sense to add even more confusion to the language by intentionally making it even more so. After all, the purpose of language is communication, and ideally that ought to be as unambiguous as is possible. As mentioned, the possessive apostrophe can't get much simpler and still be a rule, if anything it can even be improved, in doubtful instances where 'possession' could apply to either a single or multiple owners then ambiguity could be stated specifically by deliberately omitting the apostrophe altogether.

   "now that's getting really pedantic… …I'm not sure use of "that" in this context has ever been considered bad usage outside of highly prescriptive "Good English" guides."

   Your comment about making a distinction between that and who as being pedantic is informative because their meanings have always been well defined and that still hasn't changed. If many are now beginning to perceive the distinction as being unimportant then this is a recent phenomenon, and I'd reason is likely generational. Any reasonably educated person of several generations ago would consider a misusage of these words as crass and unacceptable on grounds that a language should always be able to distinguish between humans (as living animate beings) and those of inanimate objects if for no other reason other than out of consideration for the dignity of human beings/living things.

   The most recent and authoritative grammar references make this clear distinction and it's still the accepted practice. When referring to both people (in its collective sense) and to individuals then who is always used. It is however acceptable to refer to a nondescript group using that. Confusion often seems to arise when making reference to, say, a company where no clear distinction is made between the inanimate entity and those humans who are employed by the organization. For example, 'the policy of Microsoft [corp] is that…' is typically confused or confabulated with, say, those at Microsoft who determine policy'.

   Incidentally, I use The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language as my grammar reference, I purchased my copy of this 1800-plus page tome not long after it was published about two decades ago. It's the most authoritative reference of English grammar ever written, it's also still the most current one: https://www.cambridge.org/features/linguistics/cgel/reviews...., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cambridge_Grammar_of_the_E...

   The question is how far can a language decline or fragment to accommodate the lowest common denominator before becoming ineffective and falling into disuse or metamorphosing into some other altogether different language. I cannot answer that, but little doubt exists change happening and exceedingly fast at that. I'm in full agreement with you when you said "The countable/uncountable distinction in English is eroding and may well be dead in a generation.", it's only but one instance of many such changes. Whilst change has always been a characteristic aspect of English—more so than many other languages—and that sloppy usage has always been been a contributory factor, that change picked up with great apace some 50 years ago. That's when the rot set in big-time—when educators thought it a smart idea to simplify the learning of English by essentially eliminating the teaching of grammar altogether. As we've now seen the results have been nothing short of disastrous.

   If we also consider the multitude of other factors† at work on English then we've a recipe for rapid changes to occur within the language. For instance, it's unfortunate that English doesn't make use of diacriticals, then there's the propensity of English to steal words and phrases from other languages at the drop of a hat and then integrate them without due attention to context and meaning and or without attention to pronunciation, and finally there's diversification brought about through its adoption by different ethnic groups, etc. My personal views is that English is changing and diversifying so rapidly that in several hundred years it'll not only be unrecognizable to today's users but also it'll have fallen from prominence and become a backwater language of little significance.

   __

   † Factors such as those mentioned make English such a dog of a language, especially so for those who must learn it as a second language. Like it or not, English has never had the 'discipline' of say French with Cardinal Richelieu's four-hundred-year-old watchdog the Académie Française hanging over the language, nor has it had the stability of German where a German speaker is still able to read thousand-year-old German texts without much difficulty. And without diacriticals, English ends up having dozens of common words that are confusing and or are difficult to spell or pronounce such as 'through' and 'thorough' and the proper noun 'Warwick'.

   Then there are those words imported into English—imported not through any specific need as perfectly adequate ones already exists in English—but solely because they are fashionable. 'Tsunami' is a quintessential example of such a fashionable import, it's not only displaced perfectly adequate English words but despite its translators having provided a good translation into the Latin alphabet, English users choose to ignore the translation and make no attempt to pronounce the word correctly. Instead of pronouncing the hissing snake-like sound of 'tsu' what usually emerges is a bastardized slurred-out 'sooo'-like sound with little or no deference to culture from which it came. It's little wonder that much of the world cannot but help notice the palpable and very distasteful arrogance of native English speakers.

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3. VeenJan 2023
   It's not really deeply technical, it's just trying to be comprehensive and concise. If you want deeply technical, read Pullum's explanation of passives in Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.
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4. ziddoapMar 2025
   >CGEL

   Is probably either Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language from 1985 or The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language from 2002.

   I have no idea which.

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5. thaumasiotesDec 2024
   > Here's a sample explanation: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/grammar/which-vs-that

   That might be a sample of what you're thinking, but it isn't a correct explanation of anything. It's just some random mythmaking, which is par for the course from "grammar advice" websites.

   Which and that are not distinguished in the manner that page wishes they were. That cannot be used (in the modern language) to introduce a nonrestrictive relative clause. Which can be used to introduce a restrictive or nonrestrictive relative clause.

   > There is a real difference between "which" and "that", whether Joe Sixpack gives a damn or not.

   There are real differences, but there are no differences as to the usage you flagged. The bigger difference is that which, being a pronoun, is part of a gender distinction (with who) between persons and nonpersons, whereas that, not being a pronoun, has no such distinction.

   You might note, hopefully, that if feed readers were people, "feed readers who don't take 'no' for an answer" would be completely standard grammar. The same is also obviously true of "feed readers which don't take 'no' for an answer" when the feed readers aren't people.

   CGEL [Cambridge Grammar of the English Language; both authors are from the UK] doesn't even bother to mention this myth, but the first example of a relative clause that it does give is He'll be glad to take the toys which you don't want. (Chapter 12 §2.1, example 1.i; page 1034)

   If you want to play a grammarian on the internet, wouldn't it be better to know some grammar first?

   > I try to spot language change.

   > And nowadays a lot of people seem to be inappropriately overusing "which"

   You're doing a remarkably terrible job; this change took place seven hundred years ago. Here's The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage:

   > According to McKnight 1928 that was prevalent in early Middle English, which began to be used as a relative pronoun in the 14th century, and who and whom in the 15th.

   > [...] By the early 17th century, which and that were being used pretty much interchangeably. Evans 1957 quotes this passage from the Authorized (King James) Version (1611) of the Bible:

   >> Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.

   > During the later 17th century, Evans tells us, that fell into disuse, at least in literary English. It went into such an eclipse that its reappearance in the early 18th century was noticed and satirized by Joseph Addison in The Spectator (30 May 1711) in a piece entitled "Humble Petition of Who and Which against the upstart Jack Sprat That."

   (entry for that [1]; page 894 of the 1993 printing.)

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6. hilbert42Sep 2023
   Excellent comment. Whilst I'm no scholar of languages I'm aware of some of those matters to which you refer so my earlier comment is somewhat rhetorical.

   I became curious about diacritics decades ago when learning French at school. At best, I was only an average student of languages including English, so I found French quite a challenge—my strengths were in the science subjects and if I hadn't been pressured by my parents it's likely I wouldn't have studied it (my mother has French relatives thus I have French cousins and my father, a mechanical engineer, whose native language was English studied both French and Latin at school and later acquired some German—hence the pressure). In hindsight it was a damn good thing I was pressured as it made learning other languages later much easier (a modicum of German and Latin—learning German was out of necessity as I'd lived in Austria for some years).

   My French pronunciation was pretty abysmal and grimaces on my teacher's face during oral French were testament to that. However it improved after diacritics came to the rescue, I then found it easier to pronounce words such as être, café and Rue Taherè with some degree of accuracy (Rue Taherè is in Paris where my French relatives once lived, thus it was essential I pronounced the grave correctly).

   Sorry, but that long intro was necessary to justify my point that those who are not particularly good at languages and or spelling can benefit from the use of diacritics. At the beginning I didn't know how to pronounce those French words accurately but diacritics greatly simplified the process. What was particularly good about them was that I didn't have to remember the various pronunciations of 'e' across dozens of different words, that luxury isn't afforded to learners of English! French was hard enough with its gendered nouns and such without that additional burden. It's why I pity those who have to learn English as a second language, the lack of diacritics is just one awkward aspect of this 'tortured' language that makes learning it so difficult.

   One thing I've learned is that those who have a natural aptitude for languages and spelling and who develop fluency easily often fail to appreciate how really difficult they are for many people and I include native speakers here.

   Given my struggles with French I thought I was pretty dumb when it came to learning languages but my view changed a little some decades ago after I attended a lecture at the Australian Museum in Sydney given by Noam Chomsky. The notable linguist made an unexpected (and what I thought was a rather extraordinary) offhanded remark that I'll never forget which went something to the effect:

   "I am not good at acquiring languages, a new language can waft down the corridors of MIT and it can completely pass me by only for me to later find that my colleagues acquired it with considerable ease—much to my chagrin."

   What Chomsky taught me was something that I was already subliminally aware of, which is that people can acquire language skills in quite different ways and those who acquire them with ease do so in ways different to those of us who have difficulties (it's why they often don't understand why some of us find learning languages difficult).

   I learn languages like mathematical equations, I atomise them bit by bit which means I want exact literal translations of foreign words and phrases before I'll parse them into idiomatic/vernacular English. Those who are good at languages don't do this, they learn to go directly from the foreign language to their native vernacular sans atomization. Atomization is a mode of thinking and it comes from a reductionist mind. Whilst experience has taught me that reducing languages to atomized bits is not conducive to learing them it's nevertheless very hard to kick the habit.

   "The Great Vowel Shift came along and fucked up all the long vowels, and separate changes caused "a" to break into 2-3 sounds..."

   This, I reckon, is still very relevant to present-day English. Whilst only part of the problem it accounts for the peculiarities we now have with, say, 'gh' words such as cough and though which I've mentioned. Though they've morphed from their earlier guttural sounds their spelling hasn't yet caught up. Combine, this with the many other influences on English, Anglo Saxon, Norman invasion, etc., etc. and it's little wonder the language is in a complicated mess.

   I don't have any specific proposal about how diacritics could sort this out, I'm only suggesting that it would make sense if we English speakers spelled [spelt] words the way we pronounced them, say, somewhat akin to German.

   Of course, attempting to force change on a language is doomed to failure, it seems the only way is for it to evolve. The 'z' and 's' spelling differences between US and British English are already controversial enough without trying to change, say, you to just u, or through to thru. And that's just spelling, imagine the difficulties of trying to force through grammatical changes such as changing the second person you to youse or to the archaic thou even though it would make sense. Incidentally, my father's old German textbook translated the German second person du as thou. I've not seen this done in any modern textbook but it's an almighty powerful way of embedding the notion of never committing the faux pas of using du and that sie must always be used unless of course it's very clear the situation calls for it.

   What I find annoying is that few Anglophone speakers care about these mstters. Unlike the Académie française, (which although essentially ineffective, it at least acts as a reminder), there's never been any authorative oversight of English (and with its dubious history it's doubtful that any oversight would have ever been possible). Nevertheless, without it English has been left to self-styled people like Noah Webster to make improvements, however without any formal structure in place there's little to propel ongoing effort forward after they're dead. Murray, OED et al have done an excellent job at documenting word meanings and their spellings but they've had little impact on actual word usage. Moreover, it also seems that dictionaries have little impact on word usage in orher languages, words only get added to dictionaries after they've taken hold in a language, not before (I recall a once Dutch girlfriend of mine making this exact point about that remarkable Dutch tome—the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal).

   In essence, whilst reformers such as Webster have done good work and have done so with good reason, in some ways they've made matters worse. For instance, the fragmented spelling caused by differences between British and American English is already a nuisance and counterproductive in today's global world. Yes, it's perhaps only a small matter in the grand scheme of things but it's indicative of how difficult it is to make changes to a language, especially so English. Whilst, say, German has had minor reforms to its spelling and punctuation in recent decades (the German orthography reform of 1996), such reform is hardly applicable to English and can't be used as a test case for a number of reasons. For starters, German has changed very little over hundreds of years, and with a little effort modern-day German speakers can read texts going on a thousand years old but obviously that's nigh on impossible with English without special training.

   Moreover, the tortuous history of English has left us with an almost incomprehensible English grammar. By that I mean it doesn't have 'clean' rules, it's much messier and less consistent than say Latin, or French, or German, and I'd suggest that there's no one who comprehensively understands all of its rules. I own a copy of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language which, going on 1,900 pages of fine type, is testament to the fact. I've often thought this book should always be hidden from prospective learners of English for fear of giving them apoplexy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cambridge_Grammar_of_the....

   If you read that Wiki then it'll be obvious that even with such a well-researched book about English grammar written by experts in the field that there is still noticeable disagreement amongst them (see the section headed Reception). These disagreements back up assertions about inconsistencies in the language.

   I was intending to comment on your point about words imported into English as it's an important aspect of the problem but the post is already too long. I'll think about it and perhaps I'll post it as an addendum.

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